Finally all the hacks done internaly by some big Python company is released in the wild and not by them. Check out the presentation by the creator (in french) https://github.com/haypo/conf/blob/master/2013-PyconFR-Stras...

I started the development of tracemalloc at Wyplay, but I rewrote all the code for the version included in Python 3.4: complelty different API, you get different data, new implementation, etc. The old code: https://github.com/wyplay/pytracemalloc/

The PEP 445 (malloc API) also allows to plug hooks on memory allocators at runtime, instead of having to recompile Python for that.

tracemalloc is the first user of the PEP 445 (malloc API), but I wrote another toy: https://bitbucket.org/haypo/pyfailmalloc

"Debug tool for Python injecting memory allocation faults to simulate a low memory system to test how your application handles MemoryError exceptions."